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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Eagleton, the Russian formalist shifted their attention to the "material reality" of what?
(a) The critic.
(b) The fiction.
(c) The text.
(d) The facts.

2. What is the name Edmund Husserl gave to his philosophical method?
(a) Reception theory.
(b) Hermeneutics.
(c) Phenomenology.
(d) New criticism.

3. According to Eagleton, why is Hans-Georg Gadamer not concerned about bringing our cultural preconceptions to a literary work?
(a) Because unlike the literary work, they come from modernity.
(b) Because like the literary work, they come from tradition.
(c) Because unlike the literary work, the come from tradition.
(d) Because like the literary work, they come from modernity.

4. Eagleton argues that the readership his book has attracted dispels the notion that literary theory is what?
(a) Boring.
(b) Elitist.
(c) Misguided.
(d) Simple.

5. During the Romantic period, how is literature more than "idle escapism"?
(a) It is the rejection of creative values celebrated in English society.
(b) It is the acceptance of totalarian values rejected in English society.
(c) It is the celebration of totalarian values enforced in English society.
(d) It is the affirmation of creative values expunged from English society.

6. Eagleton argues that reading literature in a new critical way was a recipe for what?
(a) Political inertia.
(b) Political ambition.
(c) Political progress.
(d) Political consciousness.

7. According to Eagleton, as the first industrialist capitalist nation, England becomes what kind of state?
(a) A free state.
(b) A perfect state.
(c) A police state.
(d) A wealthy state.

8. According to Eagleton, why did the Russian formalists NOT see a literary work as a vehicle for ideas, reflection of reality, or transcendental truth?
(a) Because they saw language as potentially empowering the masses.
(b) Because they saw language as words and not objects or feelings.
(c) Because they saw language as obtuse, vague, and ephemeral.
(d) Because they saw language as a mode of speech for the wealthy.

9. According to Viktor Shklovsky, what novel was "the most typical novel in world literature" because it impeded its own story-line so that it never gets off the ground?
(a) "Tristram Shandy."
(b) "Don Quixote."
(c) "History of the Rebellion."
(d) "Animal Farm."

10. What is "imaginative" literature or literature that is not necessarily true?
(a) Fiction.
(b) Memoir.
(c) Biography.
(d) Nonfiction.

11. Both F.R. Leavis and Edmund Husserl seek to grasp the thing in itself, or the ______for Husserl and ______for Leavis.
(a) Image; eidos.
(b) Idea; essence.
(c) Eidos; life.
(d) Idea; life.

12. According to Eagleton, formalism is the application of what to the study of literature?
(a) Psychology.
(b) Linguistics.
(c) Economics.
(d) Sociology.

13. Who silenced the Russian formalists, according to Eagleton?
(a) Stalinists.
(b) Liberals.
(c) Bolsheviks.
(d) Socialists.

14. According to Eagleton, in the romantic aesthetic theory the meaning of the word literature became what?
(a) Realism.
(b) Ideology.
(c) Psychology.
(d) Communism.

15. Who was Husserl's most famous pupil who broke with his system of thought?
(a) Walter Benjamin.
(b) Hannah Arendt.
(c) Ayn Rand.
(d) Martin Heidegger.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, the subject in phenomenology was the source of all what?

2. According to Eagleton, the sentence "this is awfully squiggly handwriting" from Knut Hamsun's "Hunger" tells him its literary because of what reason?

3. According to Eagleton, what idea is "truly elitist" in literary studies?

4. What word does Eagleton discuss that is both a descriptive term to mean "literally untrue" as well as an evaluative term to mean "visionary" or "inventive"?

5. What is the German word for how reality is not objective, but experienced and organized by an individual subject?

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